Meeting of the Minds

Posted on Wed Oct 22nd, 2025 @ 4:48pm by Captain Louise Valliére & Lieutenant Commander Kirche Zerbst & Lieutenant Reina Akikawa & Lieutenant Atlas Nanting & Lieutenant Eden Seamore & Captain Elias McEntyre
Edited on on Wed Oct 29th, 2025 @ 9:33pm

1,983 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Anubis Rises
Location: Conference Room, Deck 1, ISS Anubis
Timeline: MD03 0900 Hours

The ISS Anubis was now only two days from launch. Most of the senior staff had arrived and checked in. Therefore it was time that the senior staff get together to discuss and arrange the launch of the Empires newest warship.

A simple yet effective message had been sent out to all senior staff the afternoon before.

"Senior Staff of the Warship Anubis. You are ordered to attend a senior staff briefing in the conference room at 09:00 hours tomorrow. Have departmental status reports ready. Tardiness will be punished. - Captain Valliére.

---

[Conference Room 09:00]

Unfortunately for Louise, she would not be punishing Kirche, for as much as she may have been hankering for an excuse to see that cocky little Bosh writhing in the agony booth, the Chief Engineer had arrived at the conference room on time and dressed accordingly. She even had a few minutes to kick back and file her nails while she waited for the others to arrive.

Reina slid into the conference room next. After all this time in the Empire, she still hated the horrible draft of her uniform, but if there was one thing she was good at doing, it was playing her part. She chose a chair that she intended to occupy for the briefing, but rather than take it, she instead remained standing. She had been punished before for being seated before receiving orders to do so, and as Reina had yet to gauge her new captain's policy towards being seated before being asked to do so, she hedged her bets that it was safer to remain standing until ordered to sit.

Kirche looked up at the new arrival with a shit-eating grin. "You gonna have a seat, Lieutenant, or are you going to stand there like a petrified asshole?"

"I'd ask the same of why you are already seated, commander:" Reina responded, her British accent betraying her Japanese appearance. "You would be punished with agony booth time on my old ship!"

"Feel the pain, love the pain," Kirche retorted as she continued filing her fingernails. "At least I'd be getting my exercise in..."

Reina merely scoffed at the engineer in response.

The doors swooshed open, and standing in the open doorframe was a man of average height and weight, perfectly combed chestnut hair and fern green eyes stood a man wearing the teal Scentifcict Operations uniform. He gave a slight nod as he entered and said "Good Morning," as he walked along the window, a PADD was visible underneath his arm as he walked before stopping behind a chair at the bottom of the table. "Hi, Lt Eden Seamore," He said reaching slightly over the table with his hand out towards the woman giving herself a manicure.

Kirche glanced up. "Ah, our Chief of Sciences?" she replied, returning the gesture with her free hand. "Kirche Zerbst, Chief Engineer."

"Good to meet you," He replied, grabbing the PADD tighter. "We should sit down sometime and discuss what our departments need from each other," He had his own experiments to run of course, but he wanted to make certain that his fellow scientists had what they required from engineering, like extra power or some engineering gadget.

"Oh, I'm sure your department already has some ideas," Kirche remarked. "After all the times my department has had to pester them with questions regarding the bio-neural gel? I'm sure they're getting tired of all the constant scurrying back-and-forth."

Eden gifted her a smile. "Well, there's your problem, wrong department. Bio-neural is a part of medicine. I can come down to engineering with you after this and we can sort it out."

Raelyn moved in an intense fashion into the conference room without saying a word to anyone. Normally if she was leading the meeting she'd bark orders to attention and weed out the 'less' professional officers that way, but she wanted to perform her best for the Captain.

Atlas hobbled in with his stick today the injuries from prison and torture where starting to flare up again. Every once in a while when he over worked himself they would do this but today he had done something to it to make it flare up. He sat down at the table and pondered why he was here a waste of important working time it wasn't the Renao way unless it was a life or death emergency then a Renao would make time for this kind of thing. Atlas just sat there quietly staring at his watch a friend had given him during his career a way to try and prompt people to hurry up and finish things a human trait he had picked up that kind of fused with bits of his Renao ways.

Finally the doors opened once again a d a short woman strode in. She held her head high proudly as her pink hair trailed behind her. Captain Louise Vallière made her way to the head of the table without a word to anyone.

Behind her, the massive hulking form of her personal guard and MACO commander, Elias McEntyre. The cybernetically enhanced Terran with the scars and wounds from vicious combat and hard living.

Entering the Wardroom, he bellows out to get the attention of the assembled.

“STAND TO ATTENTION!! Glory to the Empire!”

Well, well, well, look who happened to be sitting at that exact moment... it looked as if Louise was going to have an excuse to rail on Kirche after all...

The look in the glance that Reina gave in Kirche's direction merely said 'I told you so...'

Louise stood as she looked around at the staff, choosing to ignore Kirche for the time being. "Sit. We have our first orders." She said simply as she took her own seat before anyone else.

Having finally been given the order to sit, Reina slid efficiently into her seat.

Eden titled his head, as a sort of acknowledgement that the Captain arrived and he accepted her authority. He pulled out his seat and sat himself down, placing the PADD he brought with him outlining the readiness of his department and answers to expected questions

"Straight to business." Louise said as the room fell silent. "I've not met you all yet. Introduce yourself, tell me your rank, your position and why you're on this ship." She stated.

"I thought you'd know," Kirche retorted, promptly earning the stink-eye from Louise.

Reina decided to take advantage of the prompt to assume command of the conversation:

"Lieutenant Reina Akikawa; Chief Intelligence Officer." She spoke, her English accent prevalent despite her outwardly Japanese appearance. "I've been reassigned here because of my... Exploits aboard the Shuto: My reputation for not only getting the job done, but also leaving no Klingon, no Cardassian... Unmurdered in the process. Because I think we can all agree that the only good Alliance species are dead Alliance species!"

"You'll get no arguments from me." Louise said. "Welcome aboard Lieutenant. Next."

The young Human spoke up next. "Lt E Seamore, Sceince. 2nd leading expert in the field of pathology. Joined the Human Resistance Force as a Medical Assistant, took over as Surgeon and am now in Imperial Starfleet, 8 years of leading various Epidemic Response Units." Some would say he belonged in Medicine... Truth was he didn't want to make another tough call... Like when he had to choose between his newborn son and a soldier who left the battlefield with only his left eye.

The XO shot a glare at Elias. She outranked him, so what right did he have to order her to attention. She felt that was her job. She grumbled to herself before realizing it was her turn to speak.

"Lieutenant Commander Raelyn Mckenzie, Executive Officer. I am here because I have a duty to uphold to the empire and nobody will stand in my way" she asserted. "As for my past, well that's on a need to know basis" she sneered.

Finally, all eyes turned towards what was arguably Louise's least-favorite person in the room, at least at that precise moment. Glancing up from her manicure, the Chief Engineer proceeded to don a shit-eating grin as she gently reclined into her chair, her nail filer dangling loosely from between her index finger and her thumb.

"Lieutenant Commander Kirche Zerbst, Chief Engineer," she proceeded to introduce herself. "I was previously involved with the development of the Hestia program before a certain someone..." -She glared in Louise's direction, as if daring her to throw Kirche in the booth then and there- "...Decided that my services were better utilized here on board the Anubis proper. And that's all I'm willing to say on the subject."

The hulking MACO glared at the young engineer, steely, stern, his implants across his face added to his intimidating aura. She thought herself better than the rest. She had yet to prove she wasn't anything but full of herself and a drain on the Empire with her Laissez-faire attitude she gave the Captain.

"Right. Sit." Louise said. "You all know me as Captain Louise Vallière. There are several things I won't stand for on this ship. Disloyalty, disobedience and incompetence." She stated to them simply. "I expect you all to serve the Empire to your fullest abilities at all times. If you do not then I will see that you recieve punishment according to what I deem necessary."

With that said she sat forward on her chair and clutched her hands together in a fist on the table in front of her. "Our mission is to take this new Warship and take back what was once ours. This warship needs to battle ready in the next two days."

"Fortunately for us, we have a few things already working in our favor," Kirche responded. "For one, I managed to... persuade Commander Avon to pull a few strings from me and convince Administration to loan me a few extra engineers from Yard 5 to get this turkey up and running in time for launch. The bio-neural gel packs have been... pissy, as they tend to be, but thanks to my connections, I recently happened to come into possession of a data-chip that contains a trouble-shooting guide for bio-neural technology."

She reached into her breast pocket and retrieved the chip in question. "Anything that's not already on this chip, I believe I can confer with Sciences to help us with diagnosing the issues that may arise. Other than that... all major subsystems are wired up and looking to be ready in just a few hours' time... per your orders."

"Our mission is simple." Louise said to them all. "We are to go out, protect our interests. We are also on a mission to push back those Klingon and Cardassian bastards back to where they belong! We will take back what was ours." she explained to them all. "Make sure you are all ready for whatever awaits us out there. Got that?"

"Yes ma'am" Eden called out. The Chief Engineer was... power hungry and maybe could help him with his ambitions of power, now they going to work together, and maybe Eden could build a friendship and play the long game.

Elias took them all in, standing like a resolute wall behind the captain. His own duties were clear enough, Defend the Ship, Defend the Captain. Any one of the assembled in the room could be a potential assassin gunning for advancement. Not on his watch.

"Aye Captain. I'll help see to it that everyone is ready for anything" Raelyn said with a cruel smile.

"Good." Louise said simply. "Now. Once we find a Cardassian or Klingon ship. We'll have some fun. Gave everything online before that happens. Dismissed."

 

RSS Feed